"Mother, I am going to do better. Forgive me."

"Nay, my dear lass, seek thou God's forgiveness and all the rest will come easy. It is against Him, and Him only, thou hast sinned; but He is long-suffering, plenteous in mercy, and ready to forgive." And then these two women, who had scarcely spoken for years, kissed each other and were true friends ever after. So good are the faithful words of those who dare to speak the truth in love and wisdom.

As it generally happens, however, things were all unfavorable to Jane's resolve. John had been impeded all day by inefficient or careless services; even Greenwood had misunderstood an order and made an impossible appointment which had only been canceled with offense and inconvenience. The whole day indeed had worked itself away to cross purpose, and John came home weary with the aching brows that annoyance and worry touch with a peculiar depressing neuralgia. It need not be described; there are very few who are not familiar with its exhausting, melancholy dejection.

John did his best to meet his wife's more cheerful mood, but the strongest men are often very poor bearers of physical pain. Jane would have suffered—and did often suffer—the same distress with far less complaint. Women, too, soon learn to alleviate such a cruel sensation, but John had a strong natural repugnance for drugs and liniments, and it was only when he was weary of Jane's entreaties that he submitted to a merciful medication which ended in a restorative sleep.

This incident did not discourage Jane in her new resolve. She told herself at once that the first steps on a good or wise road were sure to be both difficult and painful; and in the morning John's cheerful, grateful words and his brave sunny face repaid her fully for the oblivion to which she had consigned her own trials and the subjection she had enforced upon her own personality.

This was the new battle-ground on which she now stood, and at first John hardly comprehended the hard, self-denying conflict she was waging. One day he was peculiarly struck with an act of self-denial which also involved for Jane a slight humiliation, that he could not but wonder at her submission. He looked at her in astonishment and he did not know whether he admired her self-control and generosity or not. The circumstance puzzled and troubled him. That afternoon he had to go to Yoden to see his brother, and he came home by way of Hatton Hall.

As he anticipated, he found his mother pleasantly enjoying her cup of afternoon tea, and she rose with a cry of love to welcome him.

"I was thinking of thee, John, and then I heard thy footsteps. I hev the best pot of tea in Yorkshire at my right hand; I'm sure thou wilt hev a cup."

"To be sure I will. It is one of the things I came for, and I want to talk to you half an hour."

"Say all that is in thy heart, and there's nothing helps talk, like a cup of good tea. Whatever does thou want to talk to me about?"

"I want to talk to you about Jane."

"Well then, be careful what thou says. No man's mother is a fair counselor about his wife. They will both say more than they ought to say, especially if she isn't present to explain; and when they don't fully understand, how can they advise?"

"You could not be unjust to anyone, mother?"

"Well, then?"

"She is so much better than she has ever been since the child went away."

"She is doing her best. Thou must help her with all thy heart and soul."

"All her love for me seems to have come back."

"It never left thee for a moment."

"But for weeks and months she has not seemed to care for anything but her memory of Martha."

"That is the way men's big unsuspecting feet go blundering and crushing through a woman's heart. In the first place, she was overwhelmed with grief at Martha's sudden death and at her own apparent instrumentality in it."

"I loved Martha as well, perhaps better, than Jane."

"Not thou! Thou never felt one thrill of a mother's love. Jane would have died twice over to save her child. Thou said with all the bitterness of death in thy soul, 'God's will be done.'"

"We will let that pass. Why has her grief been so long-continued?"

"Thou hed to put thine aside. A thousand voices called on thee for daily bread. Thou did not dare to indulge thy private sorrow at the risk of neglecting the work God had given thee to do. Jane had nothing to interest her. Her house was so well arranged it hardly needed oversight. The charities that had occupied her heart and her hands were ended and closed. In every room in your house, in every avenue of your garden and park Martha had left her image. Many hours every day you were in a total change of scene and saw a constant variety of men and women. Jane told me that she saw Martha in every room. She saw and heard her running up and down stairs. She saw her at her side, she saw her sleeping and dreaming. Poor mother! Poor sorrowful Jane! It would be hard to be kind enough and patient enough with her."

"Do you think she will always be in this sad condition?"

"Whatever can thou mean? God has appointed Time to console all loss and all grief. Martha will go further and further away as the days wear on and Jane will forget—we all do—we all hev to forget."

"Some die of grief."

"Not they. They may induce some disease, to which they are disposed by inordinate and sinful sorrow—and die of that—no one dies of grief, or grief would be our most common cause of death. I think Jane will come out of the Valley of the Shadow a finer and better woman—she was always of a very superior kind."

"Mother, you allude to something that troubles me. I have seen Jane bear and do things lately that a year ago she would have indignantly refused to tolerate. Is not this a decadence in her superior nature?"

"Thou art speaking too fine for my understanding. If thou means by 'decadence' that Jane is growing worse instead of better, then thou art far wrong—and if it were that way, I would not wonder if some of the blame—maybe the main part of it—isn't thy fault. Men don't understand women. How can they?"

"Why not?"

"Well, if the Bible is correct, women were made after men. They were the Almighty's improvement on his first effort. There's very few men that I know—or have ever known—that have yet learned to model themselves after the improvement. It's easier for them to manifest the old Adam, and so they go on living and dying and living and dying and remain only men and never learn to understand a woman."

John laughed and asked, "Have you ever known an improved man, mother?"

"Now and then, John, I have come across one. There was your father, for instance, he knew a woman's heart as well as he knew a loom or a sample of cotton, and there's your brother Harry who is just as willing and helpful as his wife Lucy, and I shall not be far wrong, if I say the best improvement I have seen on the original Adam is a man called John Hatton. He is nearly good enough for any woman."

Again John laughed as he answered, "Well, dear mother, this is as far as we need to go. Tell me in plain Yorkshire what you mean by it."

"I mean, John, that in your heart you are hardly judging Jane fairly. I notice in you, as well as in the general run of husbands, that if they hev to suffer at all, they tell themselves that it is their wife's fault, and they manage to believe it. It's queer but then it's a man's way."

"You think I should be kinder to Jane?"

"Thou art kind enough in a way. A mother might nurse her baby as often as it needed nursing, but if she never petted it and kissed it, never gave it smiles and little hugs and simple foolish baby talk, it would be a badly nursed and a very much robbed child. Do you understand?"

"You think I ought to give Jane more petting?"

Mrs. Hatton smiled and nodded. "She calls it sympathy, John, but that is what she means. Hev a little patience, my dear lad. Listen! There is a grand wife and a grand mother in Jane Hatton. If you do not develop them, I, your mother, will say, 'somehow it is John's fault.'"

Now life will always be to a large extent what we make it. Jane was trying with all her power to make her life lovable and fair, and the beginning of all good is action, for in this warfare they who would win must struggle. Hitherto, since Martha's death, she had found in nascent, indolent self-pity the choicest of luxuries. Now she had abandoned this position and with courage and resolve was devoting herself to her husband and her house. Unfortunately, there were circumstances in John's special business cares that gave an appearance of Duncan Grey's wooing to all her efforts—when the lassie grew kind, Duncan grew cool. It was truly only an appearance, but Jane was not familiar with changes in Love's atmosphere. John's steadfast character had given her always fair weather.

In reality the long strain of business cares and domestic sorrow had begun to tell even upon John's perfect health and nervous system. Facing absolute ruin in the war years and surrounded by pitiable famine and death, he had kept his cheerful temper, his smiling face, his resolute, confident spirit. Now, he was singularly prosperous. The mill was busy nearly night and day, all his plans and hopes had been perfected; yet he was often either silent or irritable. Jane seldom saw him smile and never heard him sing and she feared that he often shirked her company.

One hot morning at the end of August she had a shock. He had taken his breakfast before she came down and he had left her no note of greeting or explanation. She ran to a window that overlooked the main avenue and she could see him walking slowly towards the principal entrance. Her first instinct was to follow him—to send the house man to delay him—to bring him back by some or any means. Once she could and would have done so, but she did not feel it wise or possible then. What had happened? She went slowly back to her breakfast, but there was a little ball in her throat—she could not swallow—the grief and fear in her heart was surging upward and choking her.

All that her mother-in-law had said came back to her memory. Had John taken that one step away? Would he never take it back to her? She was overwhelmed with a climbing sorrow that would not down. Yet she asked with assumed indifference,

"Was the Master well this morning?"

"It's likely, ma'am. He wasn't complaining. That isn't Master's way."

Then she thought of her own complaining, and was silent.

After breakfast she went through the house and found every room impossible. She flooded them with fresh air and sunshine, but she could not empty them of phantoms and memories and with a little half-uttered cry she put on her hat and went out. Surely in the oak wood she would find the complete solitude she must have. She passed rapidly through the band of ash-trees that shielded the house on the north and was directly in the soft, deep shadow of umbrageous oaks a century old. They whispered among themselves at her coming, they fanned her with a little cool wind from the encircling mountains, and she threw herself gratefully down upon the soft, warm turf at their feet.

Then all the sorrow of the past months overwhelmed her. She wept as if her heart would break and there was a great silence all around which the tinkle of a little brook over its pebbly bed only seemed to intensify. Presently she had no more tears left and she dried her eyes and sat upright and was suddenly aware of a great interior light, pitiless and clear beyond all dayshine. And in it she saw herself with a vision more than mortal. It was an intolerable vision, but during it there was formed in her soul the faculty of prayer.

Out of the depths of her shame and sorrow she called upon God and He heard her. She told Him all her selfishness and sin and urged by some strong spiritual necessity, begged God's forgiveness and help with the conquering prayers that He himself gave her. "Cast me not from Thy Presence," she cried. "Take not Thy holy spirit from me," and then there flashed across her trembling soul the horror and blackness of darkness in which souls "cast from God's presence" must dwell forever. Prostrate in utter helplessness, she cast herself upon the Eternal Father's mercy. If He would forgive her selfish rebellion against the removal of Martha, if He would give her back the joy of the first years of her espousal to her husband, if He would only forgive her, she could do without all the rest—and then in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, she knew she was forgiven. An inexpressible glory filled her soul, washed clean of sin. Love beyond words, peace and joy beyond expression, surrounded her. She stood up and lifted her face and hands to heaven and cried out like one in a swoon of triumph,

"Thou hast called me by my name! I am Thine!"

All doubt, all fear, all sorrow, all pain was gone. She knew as by flashlight, her whole duty to her husband and her relatives and friends. She was willing with all her heart to perform it. She went to the little stream and bathed her face and she thought it said as it ran onward, "Happy woman! Happy woman!" The trees looked larger and greener, and seemed to stand in a golden glow. The shepherd's rose and the stately foxgloves were more full of color and scent. She heard the fine inner tones of the birds' songs that Heaven only hears; and all nature was glorified and rejoiced with her. She had a new heart and the old cares and sorrows had gone away forever.

Such conversions are among the deepest, real facts in the history of the soul of man. They have occurred in all ages, in all countries, and in all conditions of life, for we know that they are the very truth, as we have seen them translated into action. There is no use attempting to explain by any human reason facts of such majesty and mystery, for how can natural reason explain what is supernatural?

In a rapture of joy Jane walked swiftly home. She was not conscious of her movements, the solid earth might have been a road of some buoyant atmosphere. All the world looked grandly different, and she herself was as one born again. Her servants looked at her in amazement and talked about "the change in Missis," while the work of the household dropped from their hands until old Adam Boothby, the gardener, came in for his dinner.

"She passed me," he said, "as I was gathering berries. She came from the oak wood, and O blind women that you be, couldn't you see she hed been with God? The clear shining of His face was over her. She's in a new world this afternoon, and the angels in heaven are rejoicing over her, and I'm sure every man in Hatton will rejoice with her husband; he's hed a middling bad time with her lately or I'm varry much mistaken."

Then these men and women, who had been privately unstinting in their blame of Missis and her selfish way, held their peace. She had been with God. About that communion they did not dare to comment.

As it neared five o'clock, Jane's maid came into the kitchen with another note of surprise. "Missis hes dressed hersen in white from head to foot," she cried. "She told me to put away her black things out of sight. I doan't know what to think of such ways. It isn't half a year yet since the child died."

"I'd think no wrong if I was thee, Lydia Swale. Thou hesn't any warrant for thinking wrong but what thou gives thysen, and thou be neither judge nor jury," said an old woman, making Devonshire cream.

"In white from top to toe," Lydia continued, "even her belt was of white satin ribbon, and she put a white rose in her hair, too. It caps me. It's a queer dooment."

"Brush the black frocks over thy arm and then go and smarten thysen up a bit. It will be dinner-time before thou hes thy work done."

"Happen it may. I'm not caring and Missis isn't caring, either. She'll never wear these frocks again—she might as well give them to me."

In the meantime Jane was looking at herself in the long cheval mirror. The rapture in her heart was still reflected on her face, and the white clothing transfigured her. "John must see that the great miracle of life has happened to me, that I have really been born again. Oh, how happy he will be!"

With this radiant thought she stepped lightly down to the long avenue by which John always came home. About midway, there was a seat under a large oak-tree and she saw John sitting on it. He was reading a letter when Jane appeared, but when he understood that it really was Jane, he was lost in amazement and the letter fell to the ground.

"John! John!" she cried in a soft, triumphant voice. "O John, do you know what has happened to me?"

"A miracle, my darling! But how?" And he drew her to his side and kissed her. "You are like yourself—you are as lovely as you were in the hour I first saw you."

"John, I went to the oak-wood early this morning. I carried with me all my sins and troubles, and as I thought of them my heart was nearly broken and I wept till I could weep no longer. Then a passionate longing to pray urged me to tell God everything, and He heard me and pitied and forgave me. He called me by name and comforted me, and I was so happy! I knew not whether I was in this world or in Paradise; every green thing was lovelier, every blue thing was bluer, there was a golden glory in my heart and over all the earth, and I knew not that I had walked home till I was there. John, dear John! You understand?"

"My darling! You make me as happy as yourself."

"Happy! John, I shall always make you happy now. I shall never grieve or sadden or disappoint you again. Never once again! O my love! O my dear good husband! Love me as only you can love me. Forgive me, John, as God has forgiven me! Make me happy in your love as God has made life glorious to me with His love!"

And for some moments John could not speak. He kissed her rapturously and drew her closer and closer to his side, and he sought her eyes with that promise in his own which she knew instinctively would surround and encompass and adore her with unfailing and undying affection as long as life should last.

In a communion nigh unto heaven they spent the evening together. John had left his letter lying on the ground where he met his white-robed wife. He forgot it, though it was of importance, until he saw it on the ground in the morning. He forgot everything but the miracle that had changed all his water into wine. It seemed as if his house could not contain the joy that had come to it. He threw off all his sadness, as he would have cast away a garment that did not fit him, by a kind of physical movement; and the years in which he had known disappointment and loss of love dropped away from him. For Jane had buried in tenderest words and hopes all the cruel words which had so bitterly wounded and bereaved and impoverished his life. Jane had promised and God was her surety. He had put into her memory a wondrous secret word. She had heard His voice, and it could never again leave her heart;

And who could murmur or misdoubt, When God's great sunshine finds them out?

* * * * *



SEQUENCES

There are few episodes in life which break off finally. Life is now so variable, travel so easy, there are no continuing cities and no lasting interests, and we ask ourselves involuntarily, "What will the sequence be?" When I left Yorkshire, I was too young and too ignorant of the ever-changing film of daily existence to think or to care much about sequences; and the Hattons were a family of the soil; they appeared to be as much a part of it as the mountains and elms, the blue bells and the heather. I never expected to see them again and the absence of this expectation made me neither sorry nor glad.

One day, however, a quarter of a century after the apparent close of my story, I was in St. Andrews, the sacred, solemn-looking old city that is the essence of all the antiquity of Scotland. But it was neither its academic air nor its ecclesiastical forlornness, its famous links nor venerable ruins of cloister and cathedral that attracted me at that time. It was the promise of a sermon by Dean Stanley which detained me on my southward journey. I had heard Dean Stanley once, and naturally I could not but wish to hear him again.

He was to preach in the beautiful little chapel of St. Salvator's College and I went with the crowd that followed the University faculty there. One of the incidents of this walk was seeing an old woman in a large white-linen cap, carrying an umbrella, innocently join the gowned and hooded procession of the University faculty. I was told afterwards that Stanley was greatly delighted at her intrusion. He wore a black silk gown and bands, the Oxford D.D. hood, a broad scarf of what looked like crepe, and the order of the Bath, and his text was, "Ye have need of patience." The singing was extraordinarily beautiful, beginning with that grand canticle, "Lord of All Power and Might," as he entered the pulpit. His beautiful beaming face and the singular way in which he looked up with closed eyes was very attractive and must be well remembered. But I did not notice it with the interest I might have done, if other faces had not awakened in my memory a still keener interest. For in a pew among those reserved for the professors and officials of the city, I saw one in which there was certainly seated John Hatton and his wife. There were some young men with them, who had a remarkable resemblance to the couple, and I immediately began to speculate on the probabilities which could have brought a Yorkshire spinner to the ecclesiastical capital of Scotland.

After the service was over I found them at the Royal Hotel. Then I began to learn the sequence. The landlord of the Royal introduced it by informing me that Mr. and Mrs. John Hatton were not there, but that Sir John Hatton and Lady Hatton were staying at the Royal. They were delighted to see me again and for three days I was almost constantly in Lady Hatton's company. During these days I learned in an easy conversational way all that had followed "the peace that God made." No trouble was in its sequence—only that blessing which maketh rich and addeth no sorrow therewith.

"Yes," Lady Hatton answered to my question concerning the youths I had seen in the church with them, "they were my boys. I have four sons. The eldest, called John, is attending to his father's business while my husband takes a little holiday. Stephen is studying law, and George is preparing for the Navy; my youngest boy, Elbert, is still at Rugby."

"And your daughters?" I asked.

She smiled divinely. "Oh!" she replied. "They are such darlings! Alice is married and Jane is married and Clara is staying with her grandmother. She is only sixteen. She is very beautiful and Mrs. Hatton will hardly let her leave the Hall."

"Then Mrs. Hatton is still alive?" I said.

"Yes, indeed, very much so. She will live to her last moment, and likely 'pass out of it,' as our people say, busy with heart and head and hands."

"And what of Mrs. Harry?" I asked.

"Ah, she left us some years ago! Just faded away. For nearly two years she knew she was dying, and was preparing her household for her loss, yet joining as best she could in all the careless mirth of her children. But she talked to me of what was approaching and said she often whispered to herself, 'Another hour gone.' Dear Lucy, we all loved her. Her children are doing well, the boys are all in Sir John's employ."

"And Mr. Harry? Does he still sing?"

"Not much since Lucy's death. But he looks after the land, and paints and reads a great deal, and we are all very fond of Harry. His mother must see him every day, and Sir John is nearly as foolish. Harry was born to be loved and everyone loves him. He has gone lately to the Church of England, but Sir John, though a member of Parliament, stands loyally by the Methodist church."

"And you?"

"I go with Sir John in everything. I try to walk in his steps, and so keep middling straight. Sir John lives four square, careless of outward shows. It is years and years since I followed my own way. Sir John's ways are wiser and better. He is always ready for the duty of the hour and never restless as to what will come after it. Is not that a good rule?"

"Are you on your way home now?" I asked.

"Oh, no! We are going as far as the Shetlands. John had a happy holiday there before we were married. He is taking Stephen and George to see the lonely isles."

"You have had a very happy life, Lady Hatton?"

"Yes," she answered. "The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places."

"And you have beautiful children."

"Thank God! His blessing and peace came to me from the cradle. One day I found my Bible open at II Esdras, second chapter, and my eyes fell on the fifteenth verse: 'Mother, embrace thy children and bring them up with gladness.' I knew a poor woman who had ten children, and instead of complaining, she was proud and happy because she said God must have thought her a rare good mother to trust her with ten of His sons and daughters."

"I have not seen much of Sir John."

"He is on the yacht with the boys most of the time. They are visiting every day some one or other of the little storied towns of Fife. Sometimes it is black night when they get back to St. Andrews. But they have always had a good time even if it turned stormy. John finds, or makes, good come from every event. Greenwood—you remember Greenwood?"

"Oh, yes!"

"He used to say Sir John Hatton is the full measure of a man. He was very proud of Sir John's title, and never omitted, if it was possible to get it in, the M.P. after it. Greenwood died a year ago as he was sitting in his chair and picking out the hymns to be sung at his funeral. They were all of a joyful character."

So we talked, and of course only the best in everyone came up for discussion, but then in fine healthy natures the best does generally come to the top—and this was undoubtedly one reason that conversation on any subject always drifted in some way or other to John Hatton. His faith in God, his love for his fellowmen, his noble charity, his inflexible justice, his domestic virtues, his confidence in himself, and his ready-handed use of all the means at his command—yea, even his beautiful manliness, what were they but the outcome of one thousand years of Christian faith transmitted through a royally religious ancestry?

When a good man is prosperous in all his ways they say in the North "God smiled on him before he was born," and John Hatton gave to this blessing a date beyond limitation, for a little illuminated roll hanging above the desk in his private room bore the following golden-lettered inscription:

...God smiled as He has always smiled, Ere suns and moons could wax and wane, God thought on me His child.

THE END